TOKYO (Reuters) -The Japanese and Chinese governments have started planning a meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and China’s President Xi Jinping for mid-November, the Sankei newspaper reported on Friday.
The governments were arranging the meeting to be held alongside an international conference set to take place in Southeast Asia around that time, the Sankei said, citing multiple government sources.
An official at Japan’s foreign ministry wasn’t immediately available to comment on the report.
Sino-Japanese ties have long been plagued with a dispute over a group of tiny uninhabited East China Sea islets, a legacy of Japan’s World War Two aggression and regional rivalry.
Tokyo and Beijing were looking to arrange a summit meeting on the sidelines of a G20 meeting to be held in Indonesia on Nov. 15-16, or at a meeting between leaders of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries on Nov. 18-19 in Bangkok, Thailand, Sankei said.
(Reporting by Daniel Leussink and Mariko Katsumura; Editing by Tom Hogue)
